All right, fuck it: Iraq!

[Christopher Kubasik]

I suspect this thread will burn brighter than any thread we could produce on religion or sodomy, but what the hell....

Ralph wrote:

What we basically had is a vile tyrannical dictator who attempts genocide on his own people. He'd had WMDs before, he'd demonstrated he's willing to use them, he'd demonstrated that he continued to try an obtain them, he had ties to terrorist organizations that he certainly would have provided them to and who would certainly have used them.

Whether he had any at the particular moment of invasion is entirely irrelevant and a complete and utter red herring put out by those with ulterior agendas.

There was a time when we propped him up as the lessor of two evils against the Ayatollah. Mistake? Maybe, maybe not. No telling where Iran would have gone if they hadn't been stymied by Iraq for years.

There's 3 groups of people who are leading the rabble rousing against Iraq.

1) Those European Powers who stood to make a ton of money off of their relationships with Saddam and didn't want to see those arrangements threatened.

2) Those people who believe in handing the riegns of world government over to the UN (including many Americans) who are furious that we dared finally give up on their ineffectiveness and do it ourselves.

3) And those Europeans who felt the opportunity to throw their weight around and score points by being as vocal as possible about "not following the U.S". For these people the issue had nothing to do with Iraq or WMDs or anything. It was completely a question of demonstrating their independence from us by going left when we asked them to go right.


All the rest about what the intelligence agencies did or didn't know, or whether Bush did or didn't exaggerate is just a bunch of stuff and nonsense put out by the above 3 groups to conceal their real motives for being upset.

Excuse me?

First, um, I don't think I'm really "rabble," and it's sort of a desperate ploy to discount the opposition as meaningless mind-wasters.

Second, your final point, that either myself, or, say Richard Clark, fit into groups one, two or three is so disengenious a statement I'm going to have to give you the benefit of the doubt on this one and assume you typed faster than you meant to.  Neither Clark or I is European, Clark has no qualms it seems about unilateral decisions for assassination, and I'm a "If it's time to go to war, let's go to war," kind of guy.  I'll wait till you get back to me on this one.

But the larger point, "All the rest about what the intelligence agencies did or didn't know, or whether Bush did or didn't exaggerate is just a bunch of stuff and nonsense..." is simply terrifying.

It's clearly not "just" a bunch of stuff and nonsense.  There are officials from the intelligence agencies, the pentagon and the adminstration all making it clear the truth was bent to the will of the administration to get us into a war in Iraq no matter what.  

If the President of the United States is making a case to go to war, and is using specious or deceptive arguements to make the case, then something's gone wrong.

Your arguements about the situation in Iraq being better with Sadam are correct. (I suspect anyone who thinks otherwise never gave a rats ass thought about the Iraqis before we went to war, and are now stunned to hear daily reports of violence from a very fucked up place.)

That doesn't change the fact that when Bush and his administration were making their arguments not one of the glowing points you brought up was used as an argument.

We weren't getting rid of him because he was a "bad man."  We weren't getting rid of him because he sought WMD and might have them "some day."  We weren't getting rid of him because he had vague ties to terrorist organizations and had to be removed because of that.  

Bush never made these points, because he knew that would simply not sell the war.

If he tried to sell the war with these points, we'd also have to invade, at least, North Korea and Pakistan.  Because those points are just as valid for these nations.  And, lo, we didn't.

He sold the war saying:

a) the weapons programs were in place (despite the inspectors saying, "we haven't found them yet, we doubt they're here, give us a little more time.... oh, you're pulling us out because you're invadiing... okay...)

b) he sold the war saying, "the threat from Iraq to the United States was "imminent," (as Rumself himself said on the air a little over a year ago),

c) he sold the war saying that Sadam was in part responsible for the 9-11 attacks.... And everyone I've read in the intelligence community has made it clear that Bin Ladin and Sadam had as much in common as anti-abortion assassins have in common with a greenpeace eco-terrorist.  He had *nothing* to do with the 9-11 attacks and nothing to do with Bin Ladin

So my concern rests on four points:

1)  If the points you've raised were valid reasons for going to war, why were these not the points argued?  

2)  If the points that were raised valid, why have all of them collapsed under revelation of officials through the government and revelations of the situation in Iraq.  

And 3)  How is it just a red herring to ask why the sitting president made his case to go to war never mentoining all these spiff, newly revealed really good reasons for having gone to war, while all the reasons he sold the war on turned out to be either fabrications or an almost willful ignorance.  I mean, you might reply, "Well, people wouldn't have wanted to go to war if the reasons were he was a bad man, who might in a decade or two have WMD again, who harmed his own people, so we had to make it more of an immediate threat to the US and payback for 9-11."  That's the *best* case I can put forward -- and I still think it's shit.

And finally (again, waiting for your clarification): where in high heaven do people get off saying that if I'm concerned about either deception or incompetence in the administration, I'm either a European or a kow-towing whimp.  Please.  Might it by possible I'm actually, genuinely concerned that Bush and his team were simply and naively focused on Iraq at the expence of pursuing objectives against Al Quida?  That the naive assumption that it would all go rosey after the war speaks to in incompetence that would get a creative director fired off a video game.  (You brought up Normandy to say, "Look, more died there in one day than all the US soldiers died since the war ended."  Let's take another set of numbers....  How many US soldiers died from enemy action after the fall of Berlin and Tokyo in World War II?  Zero.  That's right.  Zero.  All I can see, we're still at war.  Could somebody in the White House please say that?)

I think my concerns questions are vital and important.  They address directly the nature of the Presidence, the role of popular sentiment in the decision to go to war, and the ability of this administration to lead.  I'm not saying they *can't.  I'm asking, can they -- and only because of all the issues I've brought up above.

Now, as you pointed out, the fall of Sadam is good in many ways.  But, frankly, I'm concerned about the leadership of my country before I'm concerned about the leadership of Iraq.  As an concerned, informed citizen, I'm supposed to questin what's going on when the administation plays either loose, lazily, or deceptively with its arguements for going to war.  And to simply dismiss such questions and concerns as being the words of "rabble" is insulting to those of us who take our role as being citizens of a republic seriously.

Yours in frustration,

Christopher

[edited] PS: at this point, you have to imagine me at the party with my foruth screwdriver in hand, jabbing my finger *toward* (but not touching Ralph), the tempo increasing as I drive toward the bottom of post, cutting him off with each attempt of his to speak with each of my bullet points (cause I really do speak in bullet points and block paragraphs), until I really drive it home with that striden climax of taking the role as a citizen of the republic seriously with just enough of a raised voice that everyone within fifteen feet *has* to stop what they're doing and listen to me finish up.  For this reason, most of all, I usually limit myself to half a glass of wine in any social circumstance.

[Jason Lee]

What's wrong with sodomy?

*****

Ok, some little bits to add.

If the Bush administration was really dishonest enough to lie about WDM, then they would've just planted some in Iraq.  I mean, we are occupying it, shouldn't be that hard to keep up the ruse.  Hell, we sold 'em a lot of US equipment when they were our little pawns against Iran (USSR backed, IIRC) during the cold war, so, ya know, we should have some stuff that matches.  That leads towards the ignorance conclusion.  Conquering a whole nation because of ignorance ain't exactly flattering.

Ok, Saddam was a bad man.  Yeah, I buy it.  But why this particular bad man?  Why didn't we march into, say, any number of places in Africa.  They've got terrorists, people attempting genocide, all sorts of bad men to deal with.  Why this one?  There is obviously another reason.  A US interest.  It bothers me that the adminstration tries to shroud what they are doing in 'evil doers', 'terrorists', 'WDM', and what not.  Come out with it, those are swell reasons and all, but they ain't why you picked this particular bad man over the others.

Don't want the evil doers to have evil weapons?  This just pisses me off.  We've got the largest stockpile of 'evil weapons' in the world.  That's just manipulating the public.  Their weapons are 'evil', ours are a 'holy sword' or some shit.  We can have them, but they can't?  Do as I say, not as I do.

Ok, so we've got 'preemptive strike'.  Gee that sounds smart.  You think that guy is going to punch you, so you hit him first.  Hmmm, yep, that's the smart thing to do.  Too bad it isn't the right thing to do.  Guilty until proven innocent?  Huh, I didn't think that's what the USA was supposed to stand for.

*****

Flame on Iraq thread.  Flame on.

[Anonymous]

The easiest way to disabuse yourself of the comfortable and comforting delusion that opponents of the occupation of Iraq fit into such alleged "easy categories" would be to go on a demo.  Just walk around and talk to people and you will find a huge mix of opinions and reasons.

But its an easy sort of slanderous attack that, in fact, depends on the audiences ignorance of the issues and circumstances; its equally appallingly cynical, as its the line peddled by those who supported Saddam while he was a Western ally, gassing Kurds and so forth.  Suddenly the hypocrites discover their bed-partner to be unsavoury and overcome by overdue faux-concern, ride to the rescue.  

What apologists for this illegal and immoral war fail to address are the real reasons for opposing the war.  It was widely and correctly poredicted that this would raise the risks of terrorism, but this was ignored: becuase for the imperialists, human life means nothing, on either side.  A few of our dead citizens is a small prioce to pay for the immense wealth that Halliburton and their White House chronies gain from reconstruction, or the geopolitical security that comes from being able to obviate Opec.

All this humanitarian rhetoric is merely cover, merely the propaganda of the gas-masked rapist and the babies torn from incubators, the lies produced by Gulf 1, or more accurately, the Second Oil War (this present being the Third).

[contracycle]

Unsurprisingly, the above post was mine.  Dunno how it appeared as a 'guest' post.

[Ben Lehman]

I support military intervention for humanitarian purposes.

So, uhm, North Korea and Burma, which one first?  Anyone?

*looks around at the now-silent hawks*

Yeah.

yrs--
--Ben

P.S.  Congo, Haiti (now), Tibet, Indonesia, etc...  This is a lifetime's work.

[montag]

just one little nitpick:

b) he sold the war saying, "the threat from Iraq to the United States was "imminent," (as Rumself himself said on the air a little over a year ago),

Having been through this up and down, high and low in several discussions in the blogosphere, I'm very very confident, that no-one in the administration ever spoke of "imminent threat".* If you can dig up quotes to the contrary, you're better than about two hundred pretty smart and obsessive (politics-wise) bloggers left and right, the CAP and the Democratic party. Good luck ;)
FWIW: this is the worst the CAP could come up with, note that the Fleischer quote is hardly conclusive (as Spinsanity points out) and the McClellan quote is not without troubles either (again, Spinsanity)

If we're talking about "in spirit if not necessarily in letter" OTOH, you're quite right IMHO.

*"imminent threat" would justify war in self-defense under international law. The Bush admin was careful not to make that claim, focussing on a rhetoric of "acting before the threat becomes imminent" instead.
God, I miss wasting my time doing this shit </nitpick>

[contracycle]

Perhaps, but thats not the whole story.  On this side of the pond, major papers splashed with "45 minutes from doom" headlines on the basis of ther claim made several times in the Dodgy Dossier - repeated several times in the PM's foreword alone.  The subsequent articles made clear that the papers understood this to refer to weapons that could threaten Britain.

The government argues that they never actually said that.  When asked why they did not correct the papers misunderstanding, they respond that this would be an endless and futile task (and yet pilloried the BBC).

It is not adequate to excuse this mess by saying they didn't actually say 'imminently'; they clearly implied this, and allowed everything to contribute to this impression.  Fundamentally, such a semantic argument is pretty puerile in serious politics, because if "words just meant what they meant" we probably would not have politics at all.  Thats what they are in the business of doing, they can't just hold up their hands and plead incompetence on a matter which means life and death.

[Valamir]

First, um, I don't think I'm really "rabble," and it's sort of a desperate ploy to discount the opposition as meaningless mind-wasters.

Sorry Christopher.  I guess I probably should have been clearer that the "Rabble Rouser" quip was directed at the media who seem bound and determined to paint our efforts in Iraq as an unmitigated disaster despite the fact that its been quite successful at achieving the majority of the goals that it set out to do and has done so quicker and with less loss of life than any other similiar endeavor in history.

Definitely not pointed at you.

But the larger point, "All the rest about what the intelligence agencies did or didn't know, or whether Bush did or didn't exaggerate is just a bunch of stuff and nonsense..." is simply terrifying.

It's clearly not "just" a bunch of stuff and nonsense. There are officials from the intelligence agencies, the pentagon and the adminstration all making it clear the truth was bent to the will of the administration to get us into a war in Iraq no matter what.

But it is.  On what day did the American people become so screwed up in our priorities that we think we actually have a right to KNOW any of that.  

Did we clamor to harass the CIA over what they did or didn't know before setting off to assassinate half a dozen world leaders and topple governments during the cold war (say in Guatamala).  You had some discussion, some raised eyebrows...nothing like this.

This is America.  We elect officials, We trust them to do the job We hired them to do, and if don't we like the job they're doing we get another shot in 2-6 years to fire them and hire new ones.

But once they're in office there are things that are called "top secret" for a reason.  And to suggest that we have a right to know that stuff is absurd.

If the President of the United States is making a case to go to war, and is using specious or deceptive arguements to make the case, then something's gone wrong.

There's a HUGE volume of literature questioning what FDR did and didn't know about Pearl Harbor before using it to drag us into WWII.  Point being this sort of thing goes on ALL the time.

Spin is an unfortuneate fact of life.  The reason why Bush felt he had a need to spin this story is because its hard to tell the difference between the news media in this country and the tabloid press.  So he took a gamble, made some more extreme remarks to get the country united and hoped it worked.  It didn't.  Big deal.  It shouldn't have been necessary to begin with.

What I regret most is that we live in a time where that's even necessary.  What should have happened is "Hey Saddam's got to go, why?  Cuz he's killing is own people, letting them live in poverty while he lives in luxury and builds up his army, and his crazy sons are torturing dissidents.  After that there's a couple more bad guys who need to be dealt with."

That should have been enough of a reason to get us to go.  But its not.

Unfortuneately the Western World doesn't really give a rats ass about how bad off other places have it...As long as it doesn't directly effect the lives of soccer moms taking kids to school we aren't going to care about the fate of the Kurds.  We've had 10 years to prove that, not that there was any doubt.

So Bush, targeted something that WOULD get us fired up.  The threat of bad stuff happening to us here.  And in order to get us fired up about it, maybe he engaged in a little hyperbole.  The only wrong thing there is that we've become such a self centered society that the only way we'd support a war against a tyrant is if that tyrant was directly able to target us...otherwise...oh well.

But to me.  So what if the president spun the info he had.  That's his job.  You can't deal with issues of national security in a public forum, no matter how much the information age has tricked us into thinking we need to know everything that goes on behind closed doors in the white house.

That doesn't change the fact that when Bush and his administration were making their arguments not one of the glowing points you brought up was used as an argument.

Hey, I'm not a Bush apologist.  That guy has unfortuneately bumbled his way through his entire presidency.  If you want parity I could list any number of bush league mistakes (pun intended) he's made.

We should have been a hell of alot better prepared for the reconstruction of Iraq afterwards rather than having to rush around pushing through no bid contracts in a desperate act to get people over there.

We've had 10 years to figure out who the individuals the people of Iraq would respect and listen to and make a priority out of contacting them and getting them involved from the start rather than waiting to see who the people rally around and then doing damage control.

We've had 10 years to institute bilingual training in the armed forces so that in every unit there's at least someone who can speak the language passably well without cue cards strapped to his wrist.

We had plenty of time to do a better job approaching and working with our European allies to get a better response from them rather than expecting them to just fall in line.  Yeah, I think the French and German response was very disappointing, like an old friend letting you down.  But you can't really blame them for being pissed off.  No one likes being taken for granted.

Is he perfect.  Hell no.  But he's doing something.  And you know.  No one in history has really made a habit out of going after dictators where they live, kicking them out, putting in democratic governments and rebuilding their economy except us.  Its been 60 years since the last time we tried this on a major scale.  Rough parts are to be expected.

Bush never made these points, because he knew that would simply not sell the war.

Exactly right.  So he did what he had to do, to get done what needed to be done.  Seems to be he had the balls to put his career and reputation at risk in order to make something happen that needed to happen, that wouldn't have happened any other way.

The truly sad part is not that he resorted to exaggeration and partial truths, but that he had to.

If he tried to sell the war with these points, we'd also have to invade, at least, North Korea and Pakistan. Because those points are just as valid for these nations. And, lo, we didn't.

Yup.  Hopefully we do.  There's a lot of governments in the world that need to go.

b) he sold the war saying, "the threat from Iraq to the United States was "imminent," (as Rumself himself said on the air a little over a year ago),

Hey, if Clinton can get away with debating the definition of "is"; I think we can get equal mileage out of debating the definition of "imminent".

I mean exactly how short a time does it need to be before its ok to react to it?   Should we really have to wait until the WMDs are delivered to the terrorists who are going to use them before intervening.  No, I don't think you'd suggest that.  So then, wheres the line?

Personally, nailing the bad guys BEFORE they get the weapons seems like a pretty good idea to me.

1) If the points you've raised were valid reasons for going to war, why were these not the points argued?

You've already answered that yourself.  Because no one would care.

Should he have brought them up anyway.  Yeah.  Should he have led with those and held the WMD thing in reserve.  Yeah.  I never claimed he was all that astute.

2) If the points that were raised valid, why have all of them collapsed under revelation of officials through the government and revelations of the situation in Iraq.

Not sure what points you're referring to?  The WMD things?  Did you really expect that we'd find some?

Maybe I'm just a born cynic but I had my money on never finding any from the day we first went in.

And 3) How is it just a red herring to ask why the sitting president made his case to go to war never mentoining all these spiff, newly revealed really good reasons for having gone to war, while all the reasons he sold the war on turned out to be either fabrications or an almost willful ignorance. I mean, you might reply, "Well, people wouldn't have wanted to go to war if the reasons were he was a bad man, who might in a decade or two have WMD again, who harmed his own people, so we had to make it more of an immediate threat to the US and payback for 9-11." That's the *best* case I can put forward -- and I still think it's shit.

That is how I'd respond.  And I in no way think its a shit reason.  Its his job.  The shit reason is that its true.  We didn't care about the Kurds. We didn't care about future WMD potential.  Lots of important people around the world were getting rich off of Saddam's manipulaiton of the Oil for Food plan so THEY weren't about to care about those things.

Kennedy invaded Cuba with less preparation and worse intelligence.  The British let civilians get bombed rather than reveal they'd cracked Enigma.  The Spanish American war was entirely manufactured out of evidence more fictitious than WMDs.  

Check history.  This is how the game has worked since...well, pretty much Washington left office.  The only difference is now we have the
media telling us about it as it happens.

The biggest problem with Bush is that he's not nearly a good enough liar to be president.

Yup, that's what I said.  Show me a president who didn't lie through his teeth to the American people.

Clinton?. nope big fat liar
Bush the First?  Heck no, we're still reading his lips.
Reagan?  Greatest president of the 20th century...fantastic liar
Carter?  Well, ok.  I might have to concede Carter.  He was way to honest for the job...and it showed in his performance.

How far back do you want to go?  

Point being that I find the level of outrage that "oh my god the president lied to us!" to be truly funny.  

To me the only sane response to such outrage is "ummm....yeah...why would you possibly expect otherwise...thats what they do.  Its what they all do."

[Anonymous]

Ben Lehman:

I support military intervention for humanitarian purposes.

Yes, good idea. Sudan. I'd very much like to see someone do something.

Oh that's right, they are.

Please excuse me for not cheering for this magnificent effort.

[Itse]

Sorry. "Guest" is me.

[contracycle]

There's a HUGE volume of literature questioning what FDR did and didn't know about Pearl Harbor before using it to drag us into WWII.  Point being this sort of thing goes on ALL the time.

Or, we might just stop following these wasters of life and limb and start cutting our own path?  If we know these are lying, butchering bastards, why believe them at all?

What I regret most is that we live in a time where that's even necessary.  What should have happened is "Hey Saddam's got to go, why?  Cuz he's killing is own people, letting them live in poverty while he lives in luxury and builds up his army, and his crazy sons are torturing dissidents.  After that there's a couple more bad guys who need to be dealt with."

Easy - nobody believes that argument.  He was the Wests bosom buddy for so long, this strange conversion to the rights of Iraqi citizens is most peculiar.  If anyone suggests that the West should evenh, say, pay reparations to slaves, which is not going to cost anyones life, the answer is always "why should we suffer to make the world a better place?"  Why, therefore, would anyone have the remotest expectation that the west would send its sons and daughters to die in foreign lands for nothing more than the gratitude of the oppressed?  It's prima facie riduculous.  A more rational explanation must be offered.

And so, Why Here, Why Now?  Thats the issue the Dodgy Dossier was supposed to lay to rest, only that contained only more deception.

The answer to Why Here, Why Now, is oil.  

Unfortuneately the Western World doesn't really give a rats ass about how bad off other places have it...As long as it doesn't directly effect the lives of soccer moms taking kids to school we aren't going to care about the fate of the Kurds.  We've had 10 years to prove that, not that there was any doubt.

Well, you're absdolutely right - in fact, the West takes certain steps to ensure that other places stay poor, miserable, and in hoc to Western interests.  

But equally, the irony is I think you'll find soccer moms have a disproportionately high awareness of what was happening to the Kurds.  

So Bush, targeted something that WOULD get us fired up.  The threat of bad stuff happening to us here.  And in order to get us fired up about it, maybe he engaged in a little hyperbole.

So he lied, because he knew better than the hoi polloi.  Plato would have been proud; how very Aristo (for a family thats been Senatorial for what, 4 generations?  I forget).

 The only wrong thing there is that we've become such a self centered society that the only way we'd support a war against a tyrant is if that tyrant was directly able to target us...otherwise...oh well.

No actually, we're so cynical we support tyrants, and only go to war in the name of oil.  All the rest is propaganda.

Hell no.  But he's doing something.  And you know.  No one in history has really made a habit out of going after dictators where they live, kicking them out, putting in democratic governments and rebuilding their economy except us.  Its been 60 years since the last time we tried this on a major scale.  Rough parts are to be expected.

And thats exactly the excuse that every Imperialist power uses, almost without exception.  So colour me cynical, but I find this totally implausible.  Its also in direct contradiction with what used to be America's stated intent of avoiding this sort of opportunistic rationalisation and committing not to be involved in foriegn wars.  Once upon a time, America had a principled anti-colonial policy, but now thats its military dominance is assured it see's no need for such a cumbersome thing as ethics, or morals.

So he did what he had to do, to get done what needed to be done.  Seems to be he had the balls to put his career and reputation at risk in order to make something happen that needed to happen, that wouldn't have happened any other way.

Well, thats fair enough: then he's a mass murderer and should get the chair.

Yup.  Hopefully we do.  There's a lot of governments in the world that need to go.

Remaking the world in your image, are we?  How is this not classical (and I do mean classical) Imperialism?

Hey, if Clinton can get away with debating the definition of "is"; I think we can get equal mileage out of debating the definition of "imminent".

Because my oponent is a doofus does not mean I don't also lose credibility by being a doofus.  This is not a zero-sum game.

I mean exactly how short a time does it need to be before its ok to react to it?   Should we really have to wait until the WMDs are delivered to the terrorists who are going to use them before intervening.  No, I don't think you'd suggest that.  So then, wheres the line?

Its precisely becuase there is no clear line that arrogant self-righteous Imperialism is widely regarded as a bad thing.  But even so, of all the places in the world least likely to hand nukes to terrorists, Iraq was high on that list (unlike, say, Pakistan...).  Again, this is just an appeal to popular gullibility (polls still show that a high proportion of Americans believe the claim that Iraq and AQ were linked, ridiculous as that may be).

Personally, nailing the bad guys BEFORE they get the weapons seems like a pretty good idea to me.

Remember that remark the next time you start to get excited about terrorists killing children.

You've already answered that yourself.  Because no one would care.

Rumsfeld certainly did not when these points were raised in the 80's no.  Whats this then, late life crisis, guilt, the ghost of christmas past?

Check history.  This is how the game has worked since...well, pretty much Washington left office.  The only difference is now we have the
media telling us about it as it happens.

Your argument is wholly illogical, Ralph, it has descended to desperate apologetic.  If its the same its always been, then the right we claim to "liberate" foreign lands is bogus.  We are NOT the enlightened West, we are as we have always been, expansionist, opportunist, Imperialist.  You cannot have it both ways.

And even if your claim were true, and the president lied "out of kindness and empthy" [presumably of the 'we had to destroy the village to save it' variety], should a president subordinate their position, their responsibility, their duty, to pursuing their private agenda?  Should the presidents conviction overule the democratic mandate he carries and allow him to act purely on his conscience?

Is he president or king, you have to wonder, that he can spend so freely the spend the lives of his citizens?

To me the only sane response to such outrage is "ummm....yeah...why would you possibly expect otherwise...thats what they do.  Its what they all do."

Thats right.  And so when they say they invaded Iraq out of alleged humanitarian concern, I don't believe them.  I think its a big, fat, hairy lie.  This 'humanitarian concern' has such a track record of being an opportunistic lie that only a fool takes it at face value.  If you want to help in a humanitarian way, to alleviate suffering, dismantle the stringent world trade regulations that hold developing countries back, allow freer migration of populations, and stop trying to turn the third world into a cheap sweatshop that sustains Western consumption.

[ethan_greer]

Let me make sure I've got this straight:

The fact that people have always lied makes lying okay.

If that's what you're saying, then I wish to go on record as disagreeing.

[Sean]

I'm against the war in Iraq, and have been from the beginning. My reasons are pretty standard: we are getting lots of Americans and Iraqis killed and permanently crippled, for the sake of a decrease in America's power and goodwill throughout the world, a decrease in respect for the sovereignty of nations and international law, an increase in worldwide terrorism, an increase in worldwide military expenditure, and somewhere between minimal gain and total humanitarian disaster for the people of the middle east.

In other words, I'm against the war because I believe there are few benefits and great costs, the least of which are the budget-busting financial ones. This is an empirical prediction I made when we went to war. So far, I consider myself vindicated. If things turn out differently, I will admit that I was wrong.

[Jonathan Walton]

I'm going to have to "ditto" Sean's remarks heavily.

Invading Iraq is cool if American was willing to deal with the consequences.  However, we're not.  No way, shape, or form.  Have people ignored the fact that most other nations in the world have many good reasons to hate us?  They did even before we started invading other countries just because we didn't like their governments.  America is the world's only superpower these days, and that's dangerous because no one can check potential abuses and tell us when we're just flat-out wrong about something.  

If you think the checks and balances in the American system of government are important, consider the fact that the current world government consists of America as an authoritarian dictator, with the UN and other countries as a powerless legislature that complains a lot.  Only countries with nukes get to vote (which is why we don't start wars with China, North Korea, or Pakistan).  It's disenfranchisement, pure and symple.

The world right now is very much like the current Chinese system of government.  It's an odd metaphor, but follow me on this one:

1. Capitalism is everywhere, with minimal controls in place to prevent abuses.

2. Everyone pay lip service to the ideology of the founders (in this case, Democracy instead of Communism), but that doesn't really reflect how stuff really gets done.  More often, it's power and money instead of the votes of the people.

3. There is an authoritarian power that tries to govern everything by making choices that are in the best interests of the greater whole.  It relies on the moral judgement of this power to make sure that these choices are good.

4. Dissenting voices are acknowledged, but not really repected or dealt with in a concerned fashion.  Instead of attempting to build consensus and gain the support of others, choices are made quickly in the hopes that success (which they expect will be quick in coming) will prove all dissenters wrong.  If success is not quick in coming, it's obviously the fault of the dissenters.

Now, the Chinese government system works pretty well, at least, in the past few decades.  But many people have serious issues with the way the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) enacts policy, especially in the United States.  I find this, ironically, very amusing, considering the United States acts just like the CCP, except on a global basis.

[Christopher Kubasik]

Hi Guys,

Ralph, thanks for the replies.  I do understand your point of view now.  I find it wrongheaded to the extreme.  However, *explaining* why would be a long, multi-threaded debate.  We're no longer arguing the facts of the war and the adminstration, but statecraft itself -- which I believe could produce an entire website itself.  And, as noted in other posts, I'm simply out of time for a lot of web posting these days.  

We're also arguing if the beliefs and interests of the american people are "correct."  Most americans believe in defending their nation, but not going out to pick fights.  Whether or not anyone believes the nonsense that Pearl Harbor was a "set up" -- after the attack, it was time to go to war, no matter what.  So, what is the role of the US in stepping into fights all around the globe?  Again, another multi-theaded topic all on its own.

(In both cases, I mean multi-threaded website to imply it would take a lot of work to untangle the issues and then put them back together into something new -- not that I *only* have a knee-jerk reaction to what you've proposed ("Lying to the US people is the only way to use our nation's might for good.")  I *do* have a knee-jerk reaction against that -- but, again, the disucussion would have to be nuanced, subtle, frustrating in its lack of moral clarity and more...  It would be a tough haul.  But my short hand version is: no, thanks.  I'll take the facts and make my own decision, thank you.)

Next,

I would like to spike Montag's dare.  Here you go:

http://hgrm.ctsg.com/index.asp?Phrase=immediate+threat

It's a great web site.  

I understand that the above link has nothing to do with your concerns, Ralph.  However, the efforts of such people as Waxman mean a great deal to *me* -- and here's why:

What this is about for me is administration officials going on the air these days and blatantly contradicting their own words time and time again, simply, baldly lying about what they said, what others have said, and expecting to get away with it -- even though the facts are on public record.  I think they behave this way because for two years they *were* able to lie baldly and no one in the the large media outlets ever did catch them on it.  *I* heard them lying all the time -- and was amazed no one called them on it.  

When O'Neill's book came out, I remember hearing, "No one writes 'tell-tale' books about about a sitting president.  It just isn't done."  I checked, and it was true.  The kiss-and-tells are usually published after an adminstration leaves.  I thought: "well, either O'Neil is the freak the Bush administration is painting him to be.... or things are so fucked up in the White House this will be the start of something really bad for them."

I believe the second case is occurring.  I believe it will only get worse from here on in.  When you've got career civil servents and career soldiers going on record every two weeks saying, "This is how this administration is screwing up the [econonomy, war on terrorism, the middle-east policy...] I think something *huge* is happening.  It's only all confirming what I suspected for two and a half years by putting together clues on my own... But it's alwasy nice to know I'm right.

The reason this checking of facts matters is because a lot of time the Administration uses lies and exagerations to trash other people critical of the adminatration -- and let me be clear here Ralph -- it is NOT the media that's doing this.  The media may be making noise about these lies and distortions, but the lies and distortions are ONLY there because folks with decades in civil service and the military are stepping forward and saying, "Something is wrong here."  Many of them.  THAT's the story.  That's not the media.  That's just people worried about the future of a nation they love.

Thus, everyone's favorite whipping boy, "the media," is off the table for this one.

And now, back to work...

(raising glass) Happy birthday all!  But I gotta get up early in the morning.

Christopher